L'Histoire Noire
by Nokomiss
Summary: Toujours pur, this is the Black family. Part Three: Young Draco Malfoy feels the call of forbidden knowledge.
1. Prologue: To Begin with the End

_L'Histoire Noire_  
  
Prologue: To Begin with the End  
  
_Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate, All but the page prescribed, their present state_  
  
-From "An Essay on Man," by Alexander Pope.  
  
The once-noble house was no more.  
  
Tendrils of blood still slid through the veins of wizards and witches, but the name was no more. The House of Black would no longer lend its name to new lives. Members of the family had been instrumental in shaping one of the biggest events of recent history. It was impossible to speak of any of the terrible wars without mentioning a Black in some shape, form or fashion.  
  
A thousand moments and decisions paved the path to the House's self- destruction. The innocent and the guilty alike were ultimately responsible, the innocent proud and the guilty sorrowful. Ancient traditions and long-since abandoned practices disappear into the depths of history, hated by those who survive and forgotten by those who are dead.  
  
But ultimately any family is formed by the people who belong to it. The Black family is like every other family, with the coveted and disliked sharing undeniable bonds and its children did it service and disservice alike. Some who bore the name had chilled their hearts 'til none could enter, and thought themselves stronger for it. Some suffered in silence and bore their pain alone, wishing for comfort but too proud to demand it. Others made their feelings and presence known in the same breath, and found no comfort in it. Some simply were.  
  
No single word or phrase could describe the whole of the House of Black. No generalization or simplistic description could trap the essence of who the Blacks were. They were loving and they hated, were passionate and uncaring, respected and revered and infamous alike. They lived and died and loved and married and lost. They laugh and cry and hurt and bleed.  
  
Members have been branded evildoers and fanatics. Members have lived out perfectly presentable and respectable lives. Members have martyred themselves to their cause.  
  
Their stories can only be told individually. There are common bonds, but each person is a force unto their own. As inextricably entwined as family is, they ultimately each face life on their own terms. Their strengths and weaknesses, successes and failures are unique.  
  
The whole is greater than the sum of the parts, true, but it is the parts that the whole is comprised of. Without them, there is no foundation for the House of Black. Without the individuals, there is no House. Without the Blacks, the name is useless.  
  
The Blacks each have tales to be told. They are remarkable and they are mundane, and for every action expressed, for every moment immortalized, hundreds more slip past into obscurity. From the surety of the present into the fogged shades of the past, their tales scream to be told.  
  
These are the triumphs and the failures of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. These are the people who bore the blood and the stigma of claiming the pure Black ancestry.  
  
_Toujours pur,_ this is the Black family.


	2. Part One: Fall of the House of Black

_L'Histoire Noire_:

Fall of the House of Black

V

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,

Assailed the monarch's high estate;

(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow

Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)

And, round about his home, the glory

That blushed and bloomed

Is but a dim-remembered story

Of the old time entombed

-from "The Haunted Palace," from "Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe

"Filth! Blood traitors!" she shrieked to little avail.

She glimpsed the abomination and the traitorous fruit of her loins at the edges of her frame, and together they jerked at the damnable curtains. She shrieked, but still she soon found herself entombed in darkness.

The frame of her portrait held her captive. Her son had somehow managed to spell it to keep her from moving into other portraits, and keeping other portraits from visiting her. Her only reprieve from the dark silence came when the curtains opened, when she heard noises in her hall, and she tried to make the best of those times. Her attempt at immortality was now shrouded in undeniable loneliness and it made her hatred that much more bitter.

She knew that her home was being desecrated at this very moment by the Mudbloods and the blood traitors, and her precious heirlooms were being tossed away, considered rubbish by her only surviving son.

She was occasionally visited by the house-elf Kreacher, who whispered that Sirius was still throwing away everything he could get his ungrateful hands on. She had a feeling that, had Sirius been able to leave the house without being swept down upon by Dementors, he would have sold everything that the Black family had amassed and given the money away to the Mudbloods and muggle-lovers.

He would have allowed flames to lick at her portrait, would have enjoyed watching her scream as the paint and magic that allowed her existence melted and burned away, had she not had the foresight to prevent harm to the portrait.

She wished, not for the first time, that she was not imprisoned within this frame. If she could reach others, if she could just tell other people what atrocities were happening within her home...

A glimmer of an idea began to form. She was still spoken to and respected by one. While that one wasn't precisely a person, he could still manage to set something in motion if it were planned right. And since he was bound to serve all Blacks, Kreacher could legitimately go to _any_ Black. All they would need was an opportunity that Sirius, with all his hot-headed tendencies, would surely afford them.

She decided. The next time the house-elf came to update her on the latest atrocities her son had done, she would set her plan in motion. And thus she did

* * *

"Filth! How dare you befoul the house of my fathers with your half-blood abominations!" she shrieked as the curtains flew open.

The skinny girl with familiar features and violently bright hair blushed as she tried to tug the curtains closed. This one was the half-blood that one of her nieces had produced in a disgusting, perverted union with a Mudblood.

She continued to scream, making her mark in the brilliant, outside world through shrieks and proclamations of truth. She looked around, noticing that some of the dust and dirt had disappeared (only to be replaced with living filth) along with artifacts that had graced the halls of this house since before her conception.

She hated how downtrodden and forgotten Grimmauld Place looked. It was a disgrace to the noble and rich heritage the walls represented. The _intruders_ were 'sprucing the place up,' but they were simultaneously destroying her heritage. Kreacher's reports were becoming more and more disturbing. Her son was throwing out all that remained of long dead relatives- his own grandfather's Order of Merlin, pictures that preserved the faces of now-dead women in the loveliness of youth, bits and pieces of memorabilia that were all that remained of entire lifetimes.

Her son was rebelling against their family's superiority by deciding that the entire Black family was solely Dark wizards and witches, and that they were utterly and without remorse. She was at a loss of where he came about that way of thinking. She had thought that she had done nothing but try to instill a sense of pride and honor into her boys, but Sirius had somehow muddled it up. He had changed right around the time that the terrible incident had occurred.

The incident had been when the heir of the Noble and Pure House of Black had been Sorted not into Slytherin, like his forefathers for centuries before, but into Gryffindor. From that point until the day he had ran away (a cowardly action from someone who was supposed to be brave, she had always thought) he had turned from a good , loyal son into a narrow-minded and self-righteous brat that she had been ashamed of.

* * *

The curtains flew open, allowing her to see the action that had woken her. She began to shriek her usual tirade of insults and degradation when she noticed something was off. The werewolf was crying. The Weasley woman was trying to console him while others passed through the hall, all looking pale and wan.

She yelled, cursing her disappointment of a son when the werewolf leapt at her frame and began to pull at the curtains, though he couldn't quite manage to conceal her on his own. The Weasley woman hurried over, and glared with pure hatred. "Your son is dead," she said bluntly.

She froze.

"He died today, killed by that horrible Bellatrix Lestrange," said the Weasley woman. "Your family is no more."

Then they pulled the curtains with a mighty heave, and she found herself in the empty and familiar blackness.

How could hundreds of years of Black heritage be reduced to this? Wiped away by her fool of a son?

The knowledge that the Black line would stretch before her as it stretched behind her had been her one true assurance that her life was not in vain. She had birthed two sons, two bearers of the noble name, and neither had lived to perform their familial duty of producing an heir. How could that hope be gone?

Bellatrix- her own niece had destroyed the last of their line? The lovely young girl endowed with all the Black line had to offer had thrown her pride and family honor aside in her blind service to the so-called protector of the purebloods, and had destroyed their line.

She had originally thought that the Dark Lord had had a good grasp on what was important. He had preached the same things she had, about the inherent superiority of those born of pure magical heritage, and the importance of keeping the power in its rightful place. She'd beamed when her dear youngest son had quietly confessed that he had gone into the Dark Lord's service.

But when her darling Regulus had died, she had come to question it. How could anyone who truly believed in the superiority of the purebloods allow one of the few remaining sons of as noble a house as Black to die needlessly? Then, whispers of rumors had reached her ears that not only had the Dark Lord allowed her son to die, but had requested it.

She had been, therefore, surprised but not shocked that such a leader could be brought down by a young child. The final nail in the proverbial coffin had been the news that her estranged son had not only been a Death Eater, but despite his holier than thou attitude had become the most infamous supporter of the Dark Lord in the entire wizarding world.

She needn't even check her vast knowledge of the Black lineage. She knew that the last hope of the House of Black had lain in the hands of her son, and he was no more. Their name was no more. Their future had been tossed away on the winds of chance, and she was the only one left to mourn it.

Except she wasn't left. She had died, too.

They had carried her corpse directly past her frame. She had watched solemnly as the men carried it past, noticing the wisp of grey hair that escaped from under the white sheet. She had heard the coughs and moans coming from the grandest upstairs room for a while, and had known that her flesh and bone counterpart was not long for this world.

After all, for what reason would a sick widow who had lost both sons have to recover?

Her beautiful, golden niece would visit, on occasion. She had escaped the shame her sisters had caused her through their ill choices through her marriage. Once she had shed the family name in favor of that of Malfoy, the actions of others who besmirched their blood had caused her no heartache. During those long, final years of her flesh, Narcissa would come visiting nearly once a month, always during the early afternoon when the sun filtered into the hallway and 12 Grimmauld Place looked its finest. Narcissa would bring her son, the pale, fine boy whose features reminded her dearly of her own Regulus.

She had been delighted to hear Narcissa call the boy Draco, thrilled to know that the Black's heavenly system of names had not been forgotten to appease her niece's overly proud husband.

Narcissa never stopped to speak to her, and her flesh counterpart rarely ventured downstairs, so she knew nothing of their conversations. She knew nothing of her own final days, nothing of the chill or acceptance of death.

Her sons had died, her husband had died, she had died but here she remained, unchanged and eternally lonely. She screamed into the darkness, knowing her labors were fruitless. No one could hear her here. No one wanted to hear her. She was one of the relics her son and the blood traitors had sought to destroy, and only her self-preservation measures allowed her to escape the fate of the other baneful antiquities.

They were so quick to destroy that which they thought was harmful and evil. Did they not realize what could be learned from the past? Did they wish to be doomed to repeat it? The old families, the untainted ones, understood the past. The old families knew what Muggles were like from obituaries in dusty books, telling how a great-grandmother had been killed by a Muggle wasting disease or a great-uncle killed in the crossfire of a Muggle war. The magic and the mundane were not to meet, and the existence of Mudbloods and half-bloods were an affront to the centuries-old belief.

But none who entered this house would listen to reason. None acknowledged the wisdom of old, and none would change. The Black name had been tarnished to the point where none remembered the days when they had been respected by the inferiors, and none realized that the Blacks would have any sort of helpful insight.

So she would allow them their doom, and only wished that they would allow her peace.


	3. Part Two: Innocent yet Shamed

___L'Histoire Noire_

_AN: _Thanks to Rainpuddle for beta reading, and to Polkat for reviewing!

Part Two: Innocent yet Shamed__

_No, it is not I, it is somebody else who is suffering._

_I would not have been able to bear what happened,_

_Let them shroud it in black,_

_And let them carry off the lanterns..._

_ Night._

_-from "Requiem" by Anna Akhmatova_

It happened during the history section of Auror training.

They were taught, along with laws and their origin, about notable events in recent wizarding history that had some influence over current problems. Nymphadora Tonks had felt the first twinges of apprehension and dread when they began the lessons concerning the Death Eaters. Their instructor, a wizened old wizard who clearly had been retired during You-Know-Who's first reign, told them histories of arrests and issues faced by Aurors during the tumultuous time.

She shifted uncomfortably in her seat as Sirius Black was mentioned almost immediately.

"Unthinkable crime," said one of her fellow trainees. There were five of them total, and she was the youngest, the only one fresh out of Hogwarts. The oldest was maybe ten years older than she, and the other three fell somewhere in between. Three men, two women and she was the only one with a special talent. She was also the only one with a shadowed heritage.

"Despicable," agreed another.

Tonks remained silent. The instructor outlined Sirius's crimes and subsequent punishment while disgust and fear emanated from her fellow trainees. She refused to add proclamations of disgust and horror to the collection.

Tonks's mother was a Black. Andromeda Tonks, with her long, lovely black hair and her shining, happy and only thinly shadowed grey eyes, was born of the same family as Sirius Black, the horrifying murderer.

The lecture turned away from Sirius Black and onto the dangers facing Aurors, with special focus on the fates of Frank and Alice Longbottom. "Tortured to the point of insanity," said the wizard. "To this day they're just empty voids."

The Lestranges and a Crouch were responsible, and again her fellow trainees expressed their horror and shock at the way that the Death Eaters had committed such atrocities. Tonks again remained silent. She could not force any words out of her throat expressing shock when she had already known what had transpired, and who had done the deed.

* * *

As a child Tonks had not given much thought to family. She had a mother and a father, a grandmother and a grandfather. That was all she needed.

She knew intellectually that her mother had parents, and perhaps other relatives, but she never bothered with asking. She didn't know them, so they were unimportant.

Names swirled throughout her parent's conversations that she did not recognize. The names were as exotic on the tongue as her own, and she wondered if she would hate Nymphadora as much if she were surrounded with others as strange and convoluted and unusual. Her mother's name is Andromeda, but to her it is truly Mum and does not count.

She would listen as her parents spoke of these exotic people who she knew she was meant to be around. She was meant for a more cultured existence than living in a dull townhouse with her laughing father and her beautiful mother, her name said it all. Nymphadora was not meant for a mediocre existence. Nymphadora was _more_.

When the conversations mentioned murder and torture and slow death and all the storybook things that were so much more exciting than her everyday life of dolls and toys and magic, she would lean closer to the doorframe and listen intently, ignoring the way the hardwood floor dug into her bony knees. She wasn't supposed to hear these things, she knew, because her mother decided such unpleasant business was no business for a pleasant little girl. Occasionally, her father would begin to read something aloud from the newspaper, but her mother would snap irritably, "Not in front of Nymphadora!"

"But Mum," she would protest. "I _wanna_ hear."

Her father would give her a sympathetic look, but he would always continue to read the paper in silence, or even fold it clumsily and concentrate fully on his breakfast.

The day after the day when everyone was ecstatic and threw parties in the street and fireworks in the air and she got to stay up late and eat pink-frosted cake, her father gasped after reading the morning headline and said in a shocked sort of voice, "Sirius was arrested!"

Tonks stared, wide-eyed and fascinated, as her mother dropped her teacup. Streaming hot liquid and angry broken white shards spilled across the floor and her mother stepped in it carelessly as she moved to the table and took the paper. "Oh, great Merlin," she whispered.

She remembered eavesdropping as the name Sirius was mentioned in laughing voices. More importantly, she remembered the rare visits from the man, all dark hair and pale eyes and rumbling motorcycle that flew through the air like a broom and practical jokes at the expense of everybody.

"Nymphadora, go to your room," her father said, and she did without arguing. She listlessly moved the furniture around the living room of her dollhouse before growing bored, so she went exploring under her bed and discovered a yo-yo. She yo-yoed while it shrieked and wailed and insulted her for not being able to always get it back to her hand until she threw it back under the bed, remembering why she had tossed it there in the first place. Finally, she had started to amuse herself by making funny faces (big noses and little ears and wildly colored hair and eyes and lips and tongue) at the mirror, which only told her in a bored tone that she was much prettier with her own nose, when her mother knocked at her door.

"Hi Mummy," she said nervously. Her mother had tear streaks down her cheeks, and she sat on her bed.

"Come sit next to me, dear."

Tonks allowed her features to melt into her real face, and obediently climbed onto the bed.

"You remember my cousin Sirius, right?" her mother began. Tonks nodded. "Well, he did something very bad and was sent to prison. That's why Mummy was upset this morning."

"What'd he do?" she asked.

"Something terrible," her mother said shortly. "Let's not speak of it again."

Tonks allowed the incident to slip away from her until the day her mother's face stared out at her from the front page of the newspaper. "Mummy!" she exclaimed, pointing. "It's you!"

Her mother stared at the paper, and said, "No, it isn't, darling."

"But," Tonks said, looking at the picture. She saw that the witch staring petulantly, proudly there wasn't quite her mother, but the resemblance was still startling. "Who is she then?"

"A bad witch," said her mother.

"But why does she look like you?" Tonks asked.

Her mother sighed. "Because she's related to me."

"Is she your cousin like Sirius?"

"This is my sister," her mother said, holding up and poking the smirking witch's picture so hard that it tore, leaving a ragged rip across the beautiful face, tearing through the mouth and cheek and leaving thel picture deformed. "Her name is Bellatrix Lestrange. She is going to Azkaban for a very long time because she did something very terrible."

Tonks stared at the picture, fascinated, until her mother picked up the paper, carefully folded it and strode out of the room.

After that, when she met together with other kids, she could always count on the whispered phrase, "I've got relatives in _Azkaban_," to make her the center of attention and the source of awe and envy from the other kids. Azkaban was infamous, and it did not matter that her memories of the convicts were fuzzy or nonexistent. The other young witches and wizards were amazed anyway.

She never let her mother hear her when she said this.

One of her strongest memories of meeting a member of her mother's family was a funeral. It was for a great-aunt that her mother had never cared for, but strands of blood, however weak, bind beyond like and dislike so her mother dressed her in navy robes and took her to a graveyard. There were only two others there, a beautiful blonde and a small boy.

Her mother froze when she saw who else was there, and Tonks had gone the extra few steps until she felt a tug at her arm and noticed that her mother had stopped. They approached the grave, and stood on the opposite side of the gaping hole. Tonks looked into the hole nervously then stared across the chasm at the two pale-haired strangers.

"Andromeda." The blonde's voice was as cold as the wind that playfully lifted the ends of all their hair, and the boy watched from her side with solemn eyes.

"Narcissa," her mother replied, and Tonks felt a jolt of excitement. The name Narcissa had come up in her parent's conversations, and Tonks had always thought that, since they both were in possession of cumbersome names starting with the letter _N_, they would get along fabulously.

Narcissa looked at her then in the same manner her mother looked at a filthy bathroom or the rare mouse that made it past the cat's hungry jaws. "Is that yours?"

Her mother was furious; she could tell by the sudden pain in her hand as the grip on her hand tightened.

"This is my daughter Nymphadora," said her mother.

She had been taught to politely greet new acquaintances, but she didn't now. Narcissa spared her a glance, and said mildly, "Not a very attractive child, is she?"

Tonks felt all her hopes that she would find a kindred spirit in this woman dissipate into nothingness. She accepted that she would be called a child. She wasn't quite Hogwarts age yet, after all. She was, however, a perfectly pretty girl, as her grandmother was fond of telling her. Definitely she was more lovely than the boy who had one hand clinging to his mother's robes, even without altering herself.

"Nymphadora is a beautiful girl," her mother said stiffly. "Is that your son?"

"This is Draco," said Narcissa. Another familiar unusual name, short though it was it was still too large a label for the small, shadowy pale boy.

"He favors Lucius," her mother said. "Though I can see the Black in him."

Narcissa looked down at her son objectively, then at the yawning hole between them and said, "Aunt Merope was fond of saying he resembled Regulus."

Her mother nodded, and was saved from further conversation as a few older witches and wizards arrived, and the funeral began. Tonks watched Draco as the funeral droned on. He looked as uncomfortable to be there as she was, and kept fidgeting. When the funeral ended, the casket was lowered and flowers tossed in the ground, her mother told her to wait for her on the path.

Tonks obeyed and watched as her mother approached Narcissa. She could tell the conversation was ugly, and while neither woman actually shouted, their voices raised sharp and loud on some words. Tonks flinched as Narcissa said something about a half-blood while pointing in her direction, and briefly wondered if her mother was going to slap Narcissa.

Her mother finally turned, and her words reached Tonks. "We're still sisters, Narcissa. Blood matters most in the end, as Mother used to say."

"You are _not_ my sister," Narcissa called. "You haven't been for a long time."

As her mother lead her away towards the caretaker's hut to Floo home, she glanced back over her shoulder to see little Draco fall over a tombstone. Narcissa scooped him back to his feet, brushing off his dirty knees and hugging away his tears. Tonks could see Narcissa's resemblance to her mother then, in the concerned furrow of her eyebrows and the consoling tilt of her mouth.

"Do you have many more sisters?" she asked.

"No," said her mother as she knocked on the caretaker's door. "None."

Tonks didn't press the subject.

When she headed off to Hogwarts, she didn't realize or even consider that everyone would know what Sirius Black had done. It was in the stony walls that she learned those harsh lessons, a tale of betrayal and murder and insanity far beyond what she had gleaned from eavesdropped conversations in her home. She listened in silence as her dorm mates told stories of deaths and horror starring her laughing, handsome cousin. It fascinated her utterly.

She let her Metamorphmagi abilities be known as she changed her hair color and style once a week and her classmates were much more interested in her different noses than years-old murders and the war that everyone tried to forget.

She was over halfway done with her education at Hogwarts when her family connections were discovered. She had been spouting a pale green head of curls when a Pureblood with a green and silver tie had called her filth.

"What was that?" she had snapped angrily, brandishing her wand. Her friends had clustered around her protectively, knowing that she was prone to accident.

"You're filth," repeated the boy. "It's disgusting what your mother did."

"My mother?" said Tonks blankly.

"A good pureblood woman like her running off with Mudblood filth," sneered the boy. "Producing an abomination like you. To think," he said to his friends, "her mother's a Black."

Tonks had hexed him, then, earning herself detention but not caring.

That night, one girl had asked, "You're a Black?"

"My mother was," Tonks said warily.

"You're related to Sirius Black?" another girl said, eyes wide.

"Well, yeah, but all purebloods are related," said Tonks, repeating what she had always heard. "Half of the school's related to him too. Can't we drop it?"

They didn't bring it up again, but occasionally Tonks would see one of her friends casting her a thoughtful, measured look that she didn't like at all.

* * *

All of the other Auror trainees had different ideas of what the names and crimes meant. They all had been affected to different degrees. One wizard came from a family that had suffered losses, and another witch hadn't been affected at all. The wizard took a self-righteous stance, angrily spitting out how despicable the Death Eaters were. The witch agreed without fervor, simply acknowledging that the crimes were sickening and the punishments suiting.

Tonks felt it was more confusing than anything else. She was innocent of the taint of her mother's family - she didn't share their family name, had never made it onto their family tree and her interactions with them had been few and far between - but she still felt a wispy, irrevokable sense of shame over the crimes they had committed.

She was sure that no one else in the room knew of her blood ties. She knew that she was being unusually quiet. Normally she was as loud as everyone else, offering her opinions and cracking jokes to help make the hour pass faster.

"Miss Tonks," said the instructor. "You've been quiet."

Every eye in the room turned and stared at her.

"I don't have anything to say," Tonks replied. "What they did was horrible, and everyone else has been quite vocal on that point."

Everyone noticed the sharp edge in her voice, but none questioned her. Tonks slunk down low in her chair, sticking her quill in her mouth before remembering it was a real quill and not a sugar one. She hated the feeling of shame she irrationally had. She'd had little contact with most, but the memory of the pain hidden in her mother's eyes whenever her family was mentioned had far-reaching effects.

Her mother hadn't chosen her family, but they had shaped who she became. Tonks herself still knew that although the pure blood of the Black family was in her veins, it was mingled with her father's Muggle roots and that made her something to be reviled and scorned by people she shared ancestors with. Her birth was a sin against their very way of life, and her mother had given up the advantages of her birth in order to allow her this life.

In the blackness of the midnight hour when the darkest and most deeply hidden fears emerged, Tonks sometimes wondered if her mother would live out her life in the same way if given a choice. Worse, she sometimes imagined how her life would be if her father was one of the Pureblood men that had undoubtedly tried to court her mother instead of her sloppy, cheerful father.

In her daydreams Nymphadora did not hate her name. Nymphadora was a darling who did not stumble even in the most precariously balanced shoes, who glided down grand staircases into the arms of handsome and debonair wizards. Nymphadora's neck and wrists and fingers always glittered with expensive jewelry and her body wrapped in silks and rare furs and enchantments. This Nymphadora was not embarrassed to walk around in public with her body morphed into curvaceous and gorgeous shapes, the way Tonks only did when locked in the bathroom or her bedroom where only the mirror could laugh at her.

Tonks knew that these fantasies were nothing more than the makings of the cheap romance novels that graced the shelves of every middle aged witch she had ever met, but there was an undeniable appeal to them, and this appeal was what worried her. What if her mother fantasized about the same thing? What if Andromeda Tonks wanted nothing more than to return to the grandeur of her youth, before she gave everything instilled in her since birth up to marry a man whose socks always slightly stank, no matter how many refreshing spells were cast upon them?

In the light of day, the fears seemed ridiculous, but there was no avoiding midnight's logic.

The lecture continued on around her, but Tonks couldn't focus on it

Her mother's blood ran in her veins but it did nothing for her. She obscenely thought that she should be superior in some obscure way. The fact that she was connected to a family like the Blacks should mean something, but ultimately, it didn't matter. Her connection was tenuous, her memories few and her association nonexistent.

In the end, Nymphadora Tonks was not defined by her blood. Nymphadora Tonks could not be defined by her appearances. Nymphadora Tonks was only defined by her thoughts and actions, and she would have to make them matter. They were all she would ever have.


	4. Part Three: The Power of Words

_L'Histoire Noire_

AN: Thanks to the ever-lovely Rainpuddle13 for beta reading! The quote from the book Draco reads is from Jeremy Taylor, "A Funeral Sermon"

Part Three: The Power of Words

_So were he a foolish father that would disinherit or destroy his children without a cause, or leave off the careful education of them; And it were an idle head that would in place of physic so poison or phlebotomize the body as might breed a dangerous distemper or destruction therof._

– from "_A Speech to the Lords and Commons of the Parliament at White-Hall"_ by King James I

His father was fond of saying that words had power. Draco didn't understand this - magic was power, money was power, strength was power but not words. Words were nothing.

"_Diffindo,_" said his father, waving his wand at a plush red pillow. The pillow was sliced open, and soft feathers spilled out. His father looked at him expectantly.

"That's different," Draco said. "That's a spell."

"But it's a word," his father said patiently. "The magic needs a conduit which is what wands and the incantations are."

"But it's still not the power," Draco said.

"Gringott's is powerful," his father said, "but all it does is store money."

"I thought you said that they controlled the exchange rates," Draco said. "And--"

"I was simplifying things," snapped his father in a familiar aggrieved tone. "Words tap into something more primal, more ancient and it's important that you know that."

"So I'm not allowed to look at the back shelves in the library because words have power," said Draco skeptically.

"You'll get to it when you're older. It'll give you something to look forward to," his father replied. "Also remember that names have power."

"Like mine?" Draco replied.

"Like yours, like mine, like your mother's," his father confirmed. "A good name can inspire respect and obedience."

* * *

Draco didn't like trying to read the forbidden, dusty tomes that his father proclaimed were unsuitable for him. They were convoluted and confusing and not worth the risk of trouble, because he didn't understand anything in them.

The books his mother forbade him to read were much simpler. He easily read the large, clear type with avid interest.

_Mercy sighed, her delicate frame shivering in the rain. No amount of warming spells were going to aid her, for her heart was icy cold._

"_Miss Lovegood," said Julian, his voice more dire than she had ever heard it, even in the face of the raging, terrifying Hippogriff that he had faced down with the bravery of Merlin himself. "Are you quite well?"_

"_Oh, Jules," she exclaimed, burying her face in the sensuous folds of his cloak. "I was terrified!"_

"_Those filthy scoundrels won't hurt you while I am here," Julian said, wrapping his hard muscled arms around Mercy's soft form._

"_Why are they even allowed here?" Mercy wailed. "I don't understand!"_

"_Because some have no sense of pride in their heritage," Julian said severely. "Some blood traitors think that their kind should be welcome, no matter how uncouth and barbaric they are."_

"_Ha!_ _I have miraculously discovered your ingenious hiding spot!" came the booming, animalistic voice of the Mudblood._

"_Oh, no!" cried Mercy. "How did such a weak-minded creature find us?"_

"_That is a good question, love," said Julian. He brandished his wand gallantly and shielded Mercy's body with his own. Mercy whimpered and covered her eyes with laced fingers, peering out to make sure her lover was still uncursed and intact. _

"_I had help," said the Mudblood. "From HIM!"_

_A crash of thunder sounded as Chester Willingham Aapparated on scene with a loud CRACK. _

"_Chester? My oldest, dearest friend?" gasped Mercy, pushing at her raven's wing tresses with her heart all a twitter._

"_Yes, Miss Lovegood, Mr. Morcock," said Chester with a mocking grin. "I told the Muggle-born where you were hiding."_

"_How dare you endanger such a beautiful flower that has only so recently blossomed?" gasped Julian._

"_It is a necessary sacrifice, I'm afraid," said Chester. "You see, your standards and morals no longer fit the times. You must change because you are wrong. Marry a Mudblood instead of your handsome Pureblood lover, Mercy. It is the right thing to do."_

"_No!" gasped Mercy, aghast. "I cannot defile myself with that!" She held a shaking arm out and pointed to the Mudblood, who was drooling and scratching at himself obscenely, like a drunken howler monkey. "You cannot force me!"_

"_Oh, but we can!" said Chester. "Your pure blood means nothing now. We control the Ministry. We control everything. Submit to us or suffer the consequences!"_

"_I would sooner perish than betray my ancestors and allow myself to be defiled!" cried Mercy. She held a knife to her heaving bosom. _

"_No, Mercy! You cannot spill your precious, pure blood!"_ _gasped Julian. He ran towards Mercy, reaching for the knife, forgetting in his distraught state that a summoning spell would work just as well._

"_I must, Jules, my love, I must," sobbed Mercy._ _"I can't stand the shame!"_

"_I won't allow this to happen," Julian said. "Not to you. Not to anyone!"_

Draco sat the book down, wide-eyed. Mudbloods sounded just as vile as his parents had led him to believe. He'd never seen a Mudblood before. His mother shielded him from such things as much as she could, and his father agreed that his son should not be exposed to something as torrid as Mudbloods until he was older. Draco wondered how long he was going to have to wait to see one for himself.

He heard that they allowed them at Hogwarts, but surely they were kept separate from the Pureblooded students. Probably there were special classes for them so that they could learn the bare basics of magic and the menial skills they would need to earn a living being subservient to their betters.

His father often said that the only useful Mudblood was a dead Mudblood, but Draco wasn't sure how useful a corpse really could be. Maybe his father meant that all the Mudbloods should become zombies! Zombies were interesting and cool, and would have to be much more useful than a bunch of incompetent witches and wizards who had been dragged up in the Muggle world by their Muggle parents.

"Draco?" his mother's voice echoed through the library.

He dropped the book and ran around the red leather couch he'd been crouching behind, racing towards his mother.

"Slow down, son," she said, laughing. "Come, there's fresh ice cream in the garden."

Draco followed her, book and thoughts of Mudbloods forgotten.

* * *

His mother sometimes begins to speak of a name, but halts abruptly, as though she had said a naughty word. Draco knows there are things he isn't allowed to know yet - things found in dark and dusty books, words that stop when he enters a room - but accepts that as a part of being a child. One day, he will learn the secrets that his family keeps, and he will keep them as well. Family is nothing but shared secrets.

This is what Draco Malfoy has learned in his short life. Words are power and family is secrets.

At breakfast, his father casually mentions Bellatrix. Draco has not heard this name before, and listens carefully.

His mother shushes his father, glancing meaningfully at him.

"It's your cousin that shouldn't be mentioned," said his father.

"Regulus was a good man!" his mother replied.

"He was a humiliation!" his father snapped. "He turned away from everything we believed; he turned away from our Lord!"

Then, just like that, his father remembered Draco was in the room, and stopped his tirade. His mother just looked tired, as though she had heard this argument before. He'd heard the name Regulus before, many times. His old Aunt Merope had often compared him to Regulus, saying he looked like him, that his Black blood shone through. His mother spoke of her cousin with such fondness, even Draco could see that she had loved him.

But if he had turned away from the Dark Lord... if he had betrayed his noble blood... then Draco didn't want to be anything like him. He knew that being a blood traitor was the worst thing possible, besides being a Mudblood, of course.

* * *

One day, Draco slips into the library again. The books seem to call to him, and he is too weak to deny himself their temptation. Knowledge is power, after all, and words are too. His father told him so. He wants to be as smart and powerful as his father, and he knows the books hold the key to achieving that.

The dark tomes along the back wall are only visible to him because of the blood running through his veins. Many of the old families use spells like that, which is why blood traitors, who can see what outsiders cannot, are so dangerous. Blood traitors are reared in the midst of the people they will one day betray, learning the same things as those who remain loyal. Blood traitors have access to knowledge that could destroy a family as the Ministry becomes increasingly unsympathetic to tradition.

Draco has heard his parents talk about the war, and knows that they were the losers. His mother sometimes frets about his father almost going to Azkaban. Draco can't imagine what his life would be like if his father had been sent to Azkaban - even with his mother's warm presence, their home seems empty and much too large when his father isn't around.

Draco peers at the books, unsure which one will teach him all he needs to know. He tugs a particularly tall and thick volume off a lower shelf, and sits in front of it. The title is embossed in the cover, but it is not a different color from the faded leather, and Draco cannot read it. He opens the book with some difficulty, and flips through the pages until a drawing catches his eye. It is a veiled doorway, and is strangely still compared to the colorful drawings in the books Draco has in his room.

The letters inside are easier to read, and haltingly Draco manages to read a few lines. "There are sicknesses that walk in darkness, and there are exterminating angels that fly wrapt up in the curtains of immateriality and an uncommunicating nature; whom we cannot see, but we feel their force and sink under their sword, and from heaven the veil descends that wraps our heads in the fatal sentence."

He flipped through the pages, deeper into the book. Singular words laced with the forbidden fascination glared out at him, seemingly brighter than the duller script connecting them into full thoughts. Blood. Decay. Death. Cruciatus. Avada Ke--

The book is snatched from his hands, and he looks up to see his father looming over him. "What did I say about these books?"

Draco knew from unfortunate experience that when his father's voice was calm and low, he'd done something unforgivably bad. He replied with the truth. "That I'm not to touch them?"

"Go upstairs to your room." His father's tone allowed no argument.

Draco obeyed.

* * *

When his punishment was over, curiosity again drove Draco to the library, but he was unable to enter. The feel of magic, so easy for him to identify after a lifetime entrenched in his family's home, permeated the door, the wall, the doorway itself. He was denied entrance.

He heard footsteps echoing through the corridor, and looked around for somewhere to hide. He didn't fancy another few weeks without sweets or flying or seeing his friends. A painting covered with a sweeping, floor-length veil was only paces away, and he hurriedly clamored behind the cloying cloth. The portrait itself, an Malfoy ancestor with a disapproving expression, began to lecture him but he shushed it.

"I don't think all this is necessary," his mother was saying.

"Do you want your son to learn the Killing Curse or some other bit of dark magic before he's even old enough to go to school?" his father responded. "You're the one who won't even consider sending him to Durmstrang."

"All Blacks go to Hogwarts. Remember, you might be a Malfoy, but I was born a Black. It's not something you can change, and Draco is one of the last."

"He's a Malfoy, darling. I wish you would get used to the fact that the Blacks will be no more. Your precious cousin is dead, Sirius Black is in Azkaban with your sister, and Andromeda's a blood traitor. Don't burden the child with a disparaged bloodline."

Cold silence.

Draco shuffled his feet a bit, uncomfortable. He'd heard his father insult his mother's cousin Regulus, who seemed to be a sore point. He'd heard his mother tell his father that she was more pure than he. He'd never heard them argue like this. It was personal and cutting, and Draco knew he was the cause of it.

He wasn't used to hearing his parents argue, and it left a sinking, sick feeling in his stomach. He teetered

"A _disparaged _bloodline?" his mother said. "The Blacks have always been greater than the Malfoys, and you bloody well know it! I know for a fact that not one Malfoy has ever served on the Wizengamot..."

Draco, clutching the veil, toppled forward. He had been fighting a losing battle, trying to balance without leaning back into the portrait, who he knew would yell and give him away, but now, lying on the cool floor of the hallway with both his parents glaring down on him, he rather wished the portrait was causing some sort of distraction.

"Just what do you think you're doing?" his mother snapped, still miffed at his father.

"Exploring?" Draco replied.

"He's not very good at fibbing, is he?" his father asked his mother. She cracked a smile, and said, "I've never figured out where he got that from."

"I was!" Draco insisted.

"So you decided to explore in a hallway you're perfectly familiar with, near the room you just happen to be forbidden from?"

"Forbidden places need exploring too," Draco replied petulantly.

"Come here, darling," his mother said, helping him stand and brushing dust from his clothes. "Why were you hiding from us?"

Draco looked at her as though she had grown another head and said, "Because I'm not supposed to be here."

"Why are you so interested in those books, Draco?" his father asked seriously.

"Because I want to be smart," Draco replied. "I want to be a good Malfoy."

"Darling, you are," his mother smiled. "And you can read those books when you're older. Your father didn't get to read them until he was grown, either, you know."

"Really?" Draco asked, looking up at his father.

"Really," his father confirmed, "though I tried to sneak a look at them when I was a boy, a bit older than you are."

"I'll have the house-elf set up the dining room," his mother said. "I think we should have somebody's favorite."

"Cake?" Draco asked excitedly.

His mother nodded, and Draco skipped down the hall, his parents following behind him.


End file.
